My mother, Sally Adams, who has died aged 73, worked for many years at Papworth hospital in Cambridge, where she was a sister in the intensive therapy unit and was one of the nurses who cared for Keith Castle, the UK’s first successful heart transplant patient, in 1979.
She worked at Papworth from 1975 to 1990 (except for a two-year spell at Treliske hospital in Truro in 1986-88). Then she switched to bereavement counselling until her retirement in 2019.
Sally was born in Royston, Hertfordshire, to Betty (nee Pigg), a dinner lady, and Alan Whitmore, a lorry driver. Sally attended the local Meridian school, where she decided early on that she had to be a nurse.
After completing her training at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge in 1973, she became a district nurse. She joined Papworth two years later, was promoted to be a sister in the ITU within a year, and spent much of the rest of her time at Papworth looking after transplant patients.
When Castle’s pioneering heart operation, carried out by Terence English, attracted interest around the world, she had to deal with reporters climbing the trees outside the ward, trying to get a glimpse inside. She also set up Papworth’s first care of patients at end-of-life group with a colleague, Sylvia Reid.
In 1991 Sally was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and as a consequence decided to retrain as a bereavement counsellor, a job that would be less physically demanding. Thereafter she worked at St Julia’s Hospice, Hayle, in Cornwall, where she pioneered a bereavement service for grieving relatives and set up the Rainbow Room, a space for families filled with books, sofas and a PlayStation. While working at St Julia’s she studied for a degree in counselling at Exeter University, which she completed in 2007.
Two marriages – to Tony Hall (1971-74), and Richard Bloss (1975-88) – ended in divorce. Sally was married to her third husband, Ian Adams, from 1990 until his death in 2023. She met Ian in 1989 at a Christian retreat centre, where, after overhearing him loudly holding forth on how to bring up children, she walked over to inform him that he was “talking a load of crap”. They were brilliant verbal sparring partners and had a relationship that was full of happiness.
She is survived by her three children – Simon, from her first marriage, and Marc and me from her second – by Ian’s son, Alex, and by five grandchildren.
